France national football team players: Zidane’s first squad, and the 66 goals it rests on

Zinedine Zidane names his first France squad on 18 September, a week before the team he took over plays a competitive match for him. There is no gentle start attached to it. The September and October international windows have been merged into one block, so France open away in Türkiye on 25 September and then play Belgium, Italy and Belgium again inside eleven days, with no friendly anywhere in the run.

What follows is the squad he inherits: the 26 players Didier Deschamps took to the 2026 World Cup, where each of them plays now after a summer that moved five of them, and the specific problems the group hands its new coach.

France’s World Cup 26, and where they play now

Deschamps named this group on 14 May 2026. Caps and goals below are career figures for France, updated through the tournament, and the clubs are the ones each player is at today rather than the ones they were at in the summer.

Goalkeepers

Player	Club	Caps	Goals
Mike Maignan	AC Milan	48	0
Brice Samba	Rennes	4	0
Robin Risser	Lens	0	0

Defenders

Player	Club	Caps	Goals
Lucas Digne	Paris Saint-Germain	64	0
Jules Koundé	Barcelona	56	0
Theo Hernandez	Al Hilal	49	2
Dayot Upamecano	Bayern Munich	46	2
Lucas Hernandez	Paris Saint-Germain	42	0
William Saliba	Arsenal	38	0
Ibrahima Konaté	Real Madrid	30	0
Malo Gusto	Chelsea	16	0
Maxence Lacroix	Chelsea	7	0

Midfielders

Player	Club	Caps	Goals
N’Golo Kanté	Fenerbahçe	69	2
Adrien Rabiot	AC Milan	66	7
Aurélien Tchouaméni	Real Madrid	50	3
Manu Koné	Roma	19	0
Warren Zaïre-Emery	Paris Saint-Germain	13	1

Forwards

Player	Club	Caps	Goals
Kylian Mbappé	Real Madrid	106	66
Ousmane Dembélé	Paris Saint-Germain	67	13
Marcus Thuram	Inter Milan	35	3
Bradley Barcola	Liverpool	28	6
Michael Olise	Bayern Munich	25	7
Désiré Doué	Paris Saint-Germain	15	3
Rayan Cherki	Manchester City	14	2
Maghnes Akliouche	Paris Saint-Germain	10	1
Jean-Philippe Mateta	Crystal Palace	7	2

Five midfielders in a 26 is a thin allocation, and it tells you how Deschamps meant to play: one holder, two runners either side, and the spare bodies spent on a forward line deep enough to change a game twice over. It also produced the tournament’s most awkward selection question, which is dealt with further down.

Mbappé has scored more for France than the other 25 combined

Add the four tables up and the 26 hold 924 caps and 120 goals. Mbappé owns 106 of the caps and 66 of the goals. The other twenty-five players have 54 between them, so the captain is carrying 55 per cent of his squad’s international scoring on his own, and France’s next most prolific man in the group, Dembélé, is 53 goals behind him.

That is not a new observation about Mbappé, but the World Cup made it heavier rather than lighter. He finished the tournament with ten goals, equalling Gerd Müller’s single-tournament haul from 1970, and took the Golden Boot for a second time, which nobody had done before. His career World Cup total now stands at 22, ahead of Lionel Messi on 21; both passed Miroslav Klose’s 16 during the same month.

Look down the other side of the table and the imbalance sharpens. Eleven of the 26 have never scored for France at all, and the most experienced of them is Digne, who has 64 caps and no goals in twelve years of call-ups. Among outfield players the goalscoring is concentrated in a handful of forwards: the nine attackers hold 103 of the 120 goals, the five midfielders 13, the nine defenders 4.

The five who changed clubs

Twenty-one of the 26 are at the same club they represented in North America. The five who moved are these.

Player	From	To	Detail
Ibrahima Konaté	Liverpool	Real Madrid	Free, June, contract to 2030
Lucas Digne	Aston Villa	Paris Saint-Germain	10m euro release clause, three years
Maxence Lacroix	Crystal Palace	Chelsea	29 July, about 51m pounds, six years
Maghnes Akliouche	Monaco	Paris Saint-Germain	Early August, about 50m euros, to 2031
Bradley Barcola	Paris Saint-Germain	Liverpool	106m pounds guaranteed, rising to 123m

Liverpool are the story inside that table. They let Konaté walk to Real Madrid for nothing when his contract expired, after 183 appearances and a 2025 title, then spent up to 123m pounds on Barcola, the largest fee paid anywhere in the window. Two France internationals from the same squad, one leaving Anfield on a free and the other arriving as the club’s second most expensive signing behind Alexander Isak.

The club map moved less than five transfers suggests. Paris Saint-Germain now supply six of the 26 and Real Madrid three, so nine of the squad sit at two clubs, up from seven in May. France’s Ligue 1 contingent is unchanged at eight, but its shape is not: Monaco’s one became PSG’s sixth, and Aston Villa’s left-back became PSG’s cover at the same position. The Premier League slipped from seven to six.

The midfield question Deschamps refused to answer

The five-man midfield was tested exactly the way a five-man midfield gets tested. Tchouaméni tore an adductor and missed both the round of 16 against Paraguay and the quarter-final against Morocco, returning only for the semi-final. Deschamps moved Koné, then 19 caps into his career, in alongside Rabiot.

He did not move Kanté. The second most capped player in the squad went through the whole tournament without playing a minute, including the two knockout ties in which France’s holding midfielder was unavailable. Kanté is 35 and out of the picture on that evidence; L’Équipe reported on 18 July that he would announce his international retirement, though no announcement has followed and he has not formally stepped away.

Whatever Kanté decides, the arithmetic is Zidane’s problem now. Take him out and the remaining midfield is Rabiot at 31, Tchouaméni at 26, Koné at 25 and Zaïre-Emery at 20, and the last two have 32 caps between them. Four Nations League matches in eleven days is a demanding way to find out whether that is enough.

Zidane’s staff, and the list of 50 that is not a shortlist

Zidane was confirmed as France coach on 28 July on a four-year deal, replacing a man who had the job for fourteen years and with whom he won the 1998 World Cup as a player. His backroom staff was named on 13 August. David Bettoni, his assistant through the Real Madrid years, takes over from Guy Stephan. Fabien Barthez, France’s goalkeeper in 1998 and at Euro 2000, comes in as goalkeeping coach in place of Franck Raviot. Hamidou Msaidie and Grégory Dupont, both from the Madrid staff, are also in a 23-person group appointed by federation president Philippe Diallo.

On 11 September a list of 50 names circulated as Zidane’s first shortlist, with four uncapped players on it: Rennes striker Esteban Lepaul, who was Ligue 1’s leading scorer last season with 21 goals, Paris FC winger Pablo Pagis, Lens defender Ismaïlo Ganiou, who was in Burkina Faso’s setup before switching to France, and Inter’s Andy Diouf. It is worth knowing what that document actually is. Federations have to notify clubs of a provisional pool of roughly 50 players about a fortnight before a squad is released, so the list is an administrative notice rather than a statement of intent. Being on it does not mean a call-up is coming. It does mean the staff asked about you, which for four players who have never been capped is still something.

What France play next

Date	Fixture	Home or away
25 September	Türkiye v France	Away
28 September	Belgium v France	Away
2 October	France v Italy	Home
5 October	France v Belgium	Home
12 November	Italy v France	Away
15 November	France v Türkiye	Home

League A Group 1 puts France with Italy, Belgium and Türkiye. Two away trips to open with, then Italy at the Stade de France, then Belgium again three days after that.

How France’s 2026 World Cup finished

France won their first six matches. Senegal went down 3-1, Iraq 3-0 and Norway 4-1 in the group, then Sweden, Paraguay and Morocco in the knockouts, the last of those 2-0. Spain ended it in the semi-final, Mikel Oyarzabal scoring from the penalty spot after 22 minutes and Pedro Porro adding a second before the hour for a 0-2 defeat. Spain went on to win the final against Argentina.

Then the bronze match. England led 4-0 at the interval through Declan Rice, Ezri Konsa and two from Bukayo Saka. France scored three after the break, two by Mbappé and one by Barcola, before Saka completed a hat-trick from the spot and Jude Bellingham finished it at 6-4, the highest-scoring third-place match the tournament has had. Fourth place, and the end of the Deschamps era.

One record came out of that game. Olise set up two goals for Mbappé in it to finish the tournament with seven assists, one more than Pelé managed for Brazil in 1970, though the comparison carries an asterisk: the 48-team format gave Olise eight matches to Pelé’s six.

Who is France’s captain?

Kylian Mbappé. He took the armband permanently in 2023 when Hugo Lloris retired from international football, and captained the side through a third World Cup in 2026.

Who is France’s head coach?

Zinedine Zidane, appointed on 28 July 2026 on a deal running to 2030. Didier Deschamps led France at the 2026 World Cup and stepped down afterwards, leaving with the 2018 World Cup, the 2021 Nations League, and runner-up finishes at Euro 2016 and the 2022 World Cup.

Other national team squads

The same breakdown for the other leading nations: Spain, England, Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, Germany and Croatia.

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